The invention relates to drawers, for example, those used for sheet stock such as recipe cards, and to table top drawers as well as drawers mounted to the underside of cabinets or shelves.
There is a wide variety of drawers used for card recipes, and one example is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,270. As with many items for household or kitchen use, it is desirable that such drawers be sturdy and easy to use and yet be light and inexpensive, that they have large capacity and yet be small for easy storage and inexpensive shipment, that they be easy to assemble and disassemble without tools and yet have their pieces remain securely interlocked once assembled. In applicant's view, the prior art known to him has not met these conflicting requirements satisfactorily, and this invention pertains to doing so in a particularly advantageous manner.
In a specific and nonlimiting example, the invention is embodied in a drawer assembly for recipe cards which is mounted to the underside of a cabinet or a shelf. It comprises a drawer top which mounts to the underside of a cabinet or shelf, a drawer bottom which slideably interlocks therewith, and a door pivotally mounted to the front of the drawer bottom to provide a hand-pull and, when pivoted to an open position, a ledge to support a selected recipe card. The assembly is easily taken apart by deforming by hand the drawer bottom's sidewall to remove the door and similarly deforming the sidewalls of the drawer top and/or bottom to disengage them from each other. Once disassembled, the drawer top, which is slightly smaller, completely nests in the drawer bottom to thereby reduce the assembly size by nearly half, and thereby allow the disassembled item to be packaged in a cardboard box about half the assembled size, with attendant savings in shipping and storage costs--a particularly important consideration for items often marketed through mail-order houses. While the walls of all three parts and quite thin, to save material and to reduce shipping weight, structural stiffness is assured by ribs and ridges which serve additional functions as well. For use, the three parts are easily assembled by hand: by mounting the drawer top to the underside of a cabinet or shelf, interlocking the drawer bottom therewith and then snapping the door in place. They can be similarly disassembled.
Both the drawer bottom and the drawer top are in the shape of rectangular trays and, when assembled, the top tray is upside down. The free margins of the sidewalls of the top and bottom have flanges, and the drawer bottom has at its back end a pair of brackets which slideably engage the flanges on the drawer top. The drawer top has similar brackets at its front end which similarly slideably engage the flanges the drawer bottom has, to thereby interlock the two to each other but allow sliding back-and-forth movement therebetween. The two pairs of brackets are in each other's way in said movement, to thereby limit the extent of the bottom's movement forwardly relative to the top. The bottom's movement back relative to the top is limited by a pair of stops which extend up from the front ends of the bottom's flanges and engage the top's brackets. A ridge extends downwardly from the inner side of each of the top's flanges, to fit just inside the bottom's flanges and thus to serve as both a guide and as a stiffening rib. The door pivots about a horizontal axis between a closed position, in which it is releasably snap-locked to the drawer top, and any one of a range of open positions. It remains in any selected open position because of its frictional mount to the drawer bottom. It has a drawer pull extending forwardly therefrom when it is in its closed position, and has at its other side a ledge which supports a selected recipe card when the door is pivoted to a position in which the door pull points downwardly or to the rear. Because of the door's frictional mount, the card can be easily adjusted to remain at an angle convenient to the user. Vertical tracks are provided in the facing sidewalls of the drawer bottom, and a card backstop can be fitted in a selected pair of tracks to support a stack of recipe cards.
When the assembly is for mounting to the underside of a shelf or cabinet, the top wall of the drawer top can be reduced to the marginal portion thereof, whereby weight and material are saved. The remaining marginal portion provides structural stability and can have holes for mounting screws. When the drawer assembly is to be used as a table top unit, the top wall of the drawer top can be continuous, and need not have mounting screw holes.